


Two Steps Away From Falling

by MarcellaBianca



Series: Since You've Been Around [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Professors, Anxious Chris Evans, Chris is an Assistant Professor, First Meetings, M/M, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Seb is a new professor, Shy Sebastian Stan, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a little bit of angst but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 02:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11797005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarcellaBianca/pseuds/MarcellaBianca
Summary: Chris hasn't been sure of what to make of this new hire. Aside from the grey-glass eyes, framed by impossible lashes. Impossible to look at without making a few snap judgements, most of them good, a few of them indecent.





	Two Steps Away From Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Behold, my first Evanstan! I thoroughly blame Luni for this, who wondered out loud why there wasn't more "college professor AU" fic featuring our boys. ;) Naturally I had to provide! This is unapologetic fluff. If I get enough of a response, I may need to add more to it. 
> 
> Smut, mainly. I would add smut.
> 
> Fic title is from "Since You've Been Around" by Rosie Thomas.

Chris hasn't been sure of what to make of this new hire. Aside from the grey-glass eyes, framed by impossible lashes. Impossible to look at without making a few snap judgements, most of them good, a few of them indecent. He'd spotted the new guy on the first day cookout, looking slightly awkward by the grilled meats. Chris wanted to make a conversation about, say, anything, but he looked back and Grey Eyes - his name is Sebastian, but those eyes - had gotten swept away by one of his new mentors.

He gets to meet him, quickly, the next day. "What's your interest?" he asks, because he's got nothing else to say over pre-workshop coffee. 

Grey Eyes looks him, a dim line between bashful and withholding. "Folklore. You?"

It's obvious to the point of fucking parody, he thinks sometimes, as Chris answers "Early American Literature." Chris Evans, Boston born and educated, a Sudbury boy to the patriot bone, falling in love with the stories of his country and its birth squalls. This semester he's teaching the graduate seminar in the subject from 1620 - 1860. Lots of Emily Dickinson and Thoreau and transcendentalism. He hopes he doesn't fuck it up too badly.

He's rewarded with a soft smile that upends Chris's nerves into something infinitely more tender, but then Director Jackson calls the day to order and the moment is gone.

Grey Eyes looks on quietly, during orientation week, speaking only when absolutely necessary. As Chris and his fellow established educators walk the new full time and adjunct professors through pedagogical requirements, there's intense concentration emanating from lanky legs and rolled up sleeves. When Grey Eyes does speak, his voice is sweetly resonant with a history Chris is dying to know. Mysteries in the strange elongation of vowels, hesitation in the middle of phrases - as if he knows the right meaning, but wanted the exact correct word to showcase his arguments. A thoughtfulness more professors could use, Chris knows.

During that first week, Grey Eyes -  _Sebastian_ \- tells the group he's originally from Romania. "I moved to Vienna when I was eight, and then came to the States when I was twelve," he says shyly, which explained the sometimes-hesitation in his voice, running it through the Rolodex of languages. Later on Chris walks through the faculty lab and catches Sebastian muttering something in his native tongue. The soft frustration throws Chris for a loop, a giant one, running across a roller coaster. 

He's foolish to think about it too much. Sebastian is...well. He  _is_. He's quiet, and diligent, and endlessly patient in the face of day-to-day frustrations. But when it bubbles over into Romanian it matters.

He stops mid-walk, pokes his head in the door. "Take the paper out and put it back in. Sometimes that works."

The look Sebastian gives him is guarded, before it unfurls into a smile that threatens to unman Chris where he stands. He babbles something about office hours and heads down the hall, cursing himself out for even stopping.

Chris wants that smile. Wants it to light up the gloomiest day. Sunbeams skittering across wooden floors, falling to bend a knee to that human glow.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It really starts with that laugh.

He's observing Sebastian's class, a common practice for associate professors. Mid-October, Jackson had emailed him. Conflicts, too many people teaching at the same time as Sebastian's class,  _would really be a favor, I know he's not in your field, but help a guy out._ Chris had agreed, because he could always use the extra brownie points.

Sebastian hadn't exactly been truthful when he'd told Chris his concentration. It was really so many things, as Chris found out during the class. It's folklore, yes, but it's miles more than that. Folklore and fantasy. Myth and magick. Literature for children that adults should study, because they contain so many multitudes. He looks his students right in the eye, treats all of them as his equals.

Sebastian blends critical work effortlessly with stories of princesses and red hot shoes. Worlds that fall to pieces only to be built again. Enchanted watercress and hair used as paramour ladders. Chris really should be taking notes, so Jackson can get a measure of the skill Sebastian has in the classroom, but the notebook stays unopened more often than not; Chris just wants to listen to him.

One of his students, a small blonde with a nose ring, makes a timely joke connecting the wives of Bluebeard to the women of Gilead in  _Handmaid's Tale_ , and Sebastian throws his head back, laughs in pure, unvarnished delight. It's the Henry Higgins _by George, she's got it_ sound. The laugh is so childlike, so open and free, compared to the guarded eyes Chris met on the first day.

Chris is falling fast. The laugh cut the strings of any parachute.

He wants to hear that laugh every damn day, in all of its delicious permutations. 

He's in so much trouble.

 

* * *

 

They pass each other in the hallway more often than not; Chris's office is located down the hall from the main lounge, and Sebastian can be found in there nearly every day with his lunch and a few friends from his cohort. Occasionally Chris will sit down and chat, but he won't talk to Sebastian directly if he can help it. There's too much there. Too overwhelming. If Chris were to look at Sebastian right in the eyes, he'd say something foolish, something like  _I think I love you, I don't even know you, but Christ I want to_. As it stands, he talks to Scarlett and Mackie about their midterm assignments while darting glances at the way Sebastian's throat bobs when he sips his espresso.

If Scarlett sees it, she doesn't say anything - of course she wouldn't - but Mackie does, and corners Chris in his office the next day. "You're not exactly subtle," he warns, before checking out the door in case of Sebastian or wayward students. Chris scratches at the beard he grows during the winter months.  _You're like a bear_ his mother teases when he comes home to Boston for the holidays. "It's nothing," he manages. Mackie just shrugs. "Okay. Just be careful. Keep the longing looks down to a minimum."

It's hard when they pass each other every day, and Sebastian offers Chris a smile that fairly glows in the dark florescence of the hallways. Chris ducks his head, avoids his gaze, lest he go bright scarlet.

 

* * *

 

It comes to a head a few weeks later. Chris has managed a few brief stabs at conversation, words that trip and spill out of his mouth with all of the grace of a newborn giraffe, while Sebastian offers up brilliantly shy smiles and chestnuts of pure wisdom. Chris has a PhD for fuck's sake, he has a  _doctorate_ in  _words_ , and this man, this  _man_ , rips all of the words out of him, leaves him with fumbling impressions of sentences.

Lately Sebastian's been taking other means to get to his office, disappearing from the lounge at meals. Ducking away from Chris's gaze in meetings or hallways. The smile that's been such a presence in Chris's life has diminished, replaced by wary shuffles or worse, cool indifference.

Chris is in his office, working, when the knock comes. Sebastian pokes his head through the door. Chris jumps up so fast he nearly disrupts three student essays on his desk. "Can I help you?" He forces himself to look into Sebastian's eyes, in spite of the free fall it puts him in.

Sebastian sidles in, keeping close to the wall next to Chris's bookshelf. Chris hasn't really done a lot with his office just yet - he's just gotten it, and he's torn between wanting to showcase his teaching certificates or just putting up a ton of books and letting his interests speak for themselves. Chris has been in Sebastian's office exactly once, to drop off Jackson's evaluation of his first semester.  It's beautiful, in a comfortable way: Squashy chairs for the students, dozens of prints of the collected fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen and Perrault, an old leather-bound volume of Romanian folklore. It's entirely Sebastian, or as much as Chris knows about the man.  _I want to know more_ , his heart urged. 

"Are you all right?" he asks, concern filling him at the sight of how hesitant Sebastian appears. Sebastian shoves his hands in his pockets. "I wanted to ask you in person if there's something I did that first week, or at all during September."

"What." Chris blinks, thoroughly bewildered. 

"I thought -  _rahat_ \- I wasn't sure," Sebastian starts, his words failing to string together in a way that would settle Chris's confusion. "I keep thinking I must have done something, something was amiss."

"I don't really know what you're talking about, to be honest," Chris says, a laugh breaking up the sentence. "Done what?"

"You don't like me."

The air falls out of the room. Everything comes to a crashing, horrified halt. Chris's face must drain of blood, because Seb takes one giant step back. "I'm, uh-"

"You think I don't like you?" Chris's voice comes out surprisingly strong, considering his body is shattering into fragments. 

"I  _know_ you don't like me." Sebastian laughs, and Jesus, it levels Chris, just pancakes him flat, the  _sadness_ in the music of that sound, "You avoid me and whenever I try to talk to you, you can't look me in the face. I'm not expecting everyone to like me," and there's  _pain_ in Sebastian's eyes, and Chris remembers with cold clarity the stories he's heard about Romania in the 1980s, about rations and secret police and state-sponsored broadcasting, and he's frozen, poleaxed, undone. 

He's been the biggest idiot. And there have been plenty of moments in Chris's life where he's been a big idiot. But this is the biggest. The most monumental. 

Sebastian looks down, pushes his shoulders up towards his ears, looks so much smaller. "I probably just put my foot in it."

Chris reaches out. Touches. Holds.

His hand is on Sebastian's arm, gently securing him from fleeing the premises. The muscles underneath his grip are tight with unresolved tension, but Sebastian doesn't move.

"I do like you." Chris swallows. Checks the door. "That's the problem. Liking you."

Sebastian's eyes snap up, meeting Chris's in a moment of pure, burning realization that both floors Chris and sends him straight to the sky.

"I don't consider that a problem," he says, that slow grin returning to his face, a blossom of pure light. "I think you and I have very similar problems."

And then he's  _kissing_ Chris, with that full mouth still in a smile, and there are no words Chris has ever learned that could describe it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos make me happy happy!


End file.
